Recent posts by XbubblesX on Kongregate

The reason why galaxy life is closing because of the ratings it got very high so high it will get removed and be sent to facebook and same with backyard monsters and fanasty online and i dont understand WHY is there a update and it is getting removed?
-Bobz08 and Shinkicker27

It was already on FB at the same time it was here. The way it seems to be going is they are using a smaller base of gamers only (Kong;Us) to test and tweak the beta version (which this game was) after it gets good reviews here and they make it work better, BAM! they take it from the gamers who helped test it basically.

I’ve probably found 5 so far at lvl 3 star base, but they keep disappearing.
Yesterday I got 2 and they showed up in the star base upgrade costs so I thought it stopped, but when I got one today and went to upgrade it, it said 0/3, anyone know why this is happening or how to stop it from happening?

Also, at 149,000 gold capacity and fully loaded, upgrading the star base to 4 (which it says costs 148,800), claims that I am 200 gold short of upgrading it.

So, somewhere in the coding I think it’s checking the |difference| of cost vs supply, might want to fix that devs.

UBI and DC do not check the forums here….if you have problems you need to get in touch with them. Kong only hosts the game.

eXorsus Gaming is looking for two more players. We currently have 13 and I believe that 15 members would round off our team perfectly. Applicants should have a minimum level of 100. We are currently 133-2.

You say 13…I say more like 9-10 with the few people who seem to be not very active….all though with Ally’s rapid leveling up maybe she counts as 2-3?

Hey, Razor’s ideas were pretty similar to what I ended up going with in Sonny. Completing the game seemed more logical than grinding up levels, though.

I honestly have not checked this thread in a while, and part of the reason is because, again, many of the suggestions in this thread would be impossible to implement. Here’s the process that I go through whenever I create new badges:

Step 1. Figure out what’s possible.

Step 2. Decide out what’s fun/reasonable/logical, then assign it a difficulty.

Step 3. Test to make sure it works by getting an idea of when these statistics report to the Kongregate server.

Step 4. 60% of the time, the stats are not submitted often or reliably enough to create a badge, so the developer is hassled over email or AIM.

Step 5. Grab screenshots and create images.

Step 6. Come up with names.

Step 7. Launch.

So, as you can see, there are 7 steps to creating highly effective badges. And most people here are ignoring Step 1. Every single person reading this thread is capable of doing steps 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6.

“But Greg,” you say. “You’re a super awesome badge programmer with lots of admin tools on Kongregate. If only we had access to whatever you have access to!”

“Quiet!” I harshly reply. "I’m not a programmer, and creating badges on Kongregate doesn’t actually require any technical skills. Additionally, beyond developer email addresses, I hardly have access to any information that normal Kongregate users don’t also have access to! I can change statistics to show up in the high scores list if I want, to get an idea of how well people are playing a game, and whether or not something like a “gamecomplete 1” stat has ever been submitted to us. That’s it.

Try this. Go to a game with our API (green light in chat). Type ?debug_level=3 at the end of the URL. When chat loads, you’ll see a bunch of messages being spammed by a user named “info.” These are all the stats that the game is submitting to us. That’s all of them, right there. All conditions used to create badges on Kongregate are merely high scores — even if they’re not always displayed in the “scores” tab! They will, however, be displayed here.

Please reread that. All badges on Kongregate simply use high scores. That’s it. There’s nothing beyond that. So how do I make a badge like “complete Sonny”? Simple. There’s a high score called “game” that Krin (Armor Games) submits to us. If you don’t beat the game, it doesn’t send anything (sometimes other games will send a 0). When you beat the game, congrats, you got a high score of “1.” So when I go to create a badge for something like that, I set the “high score type” as “game” (short for “game completed”) and set the quota to “1.”

That’s it. That’s all I can do. No, I can’t do “complete Sonny without dying.” There’s no high score for that. I can’t do “complete Fancy Pants without collecting any squiggles.” I can’t do these because they are not high scores. I can’t repeat this enough.

Anyway, once you’ve used ?debug_level=3 to see which stats the game is capable of submitting, play the game a bit. If you don’t see anything else, then oh noes, the API is broken. If, however, you see “info” submitting numbers with high score names attached to them, then this is awesome — it means that the game is sending exactly those stats at exactly that time. You can see exactly what our server sees, and you can even see exactly what I see when I’m testing to make sure that the API is functioning properly. Try using this debug menu while earning badges. You will notice that statistics required for earning a badge are sent from “info” in chat at the exact same time that a badge is awarded. We have a server for testing, but I don’t even use it for testing badges before launching them. Instead, I compulsively play a game over and over with my eyes glued to the messages sent by “info” in chat, making sure that stats are always sent correctly and reliably. If you’ve ever encountered a glitch with not getting a badge before, it’s because this stat was not sent to the Kongregate servers by the “info” message.

Try this: Get a badge idea. Let’s say “collect 10 squiggles in Fancy Pants.” Go to Fancy Pants and put ?debug_level=3 at the end of the URL. Collect 10 squiggles. Nothing is being sent, right? What this means is that your badge might not work! Now try going through a door. Suddenly, “info” will submit the “squigglesget” along with the number that you have collected. What we’ve learned here is that Dr Nero is submitting stats to Kongregate whenever Fancy Pants Man goes through a doorway in the game.

Sometimes I’ll use this method to decide that a submission might technically work, but it’s highly unreliable. For example, what if Amberial submitted “Aces: 22” right when you collect all 22 aces? The API must be working perfectly, right? Wrong. If someone collects all 22 aces before the badge is created, that person is screwed. He will need to restart the entire game. Likewise, if someone collects all 22 aces during a connection blip, he will have essentially “wasted his chance” to have that stat submitted. So what oddgoo very wisely does is submit “Aces: X” (where “X” is the number you’ve collected) every time you load up the level screen. Try going to Amberial: Nebulosa Realms yourself and try it, by entering ?debug_level=3 at the end of the URL and loading up the level select screen. You’ll see lots of juicy stats being submitted to us. This means that the submission process is reliable, and oddgoo is awesome. No API hassling from Greg required.

Anyway, kind of off on a tangent there, but my point is that you guys have way more power to investigate these matters than you seem to think you do. Sometimes if I’m especially busy and don’t want to seem too rude about not replying to people’s whispers in chat, I’ll even design and test badges on a secret non-admin account!

So while I really do appreciate everyone’s suggestions, but please keep the above things in mind. I get tons of emails, whispers and IMs from people suggesting achievement designs, and a very large portion of them would be impossible to implement.

Well whatever you do, do know that its not entirely DC’s decision and all that above is the creator of this site’s guidelines for badges.

I browsed the comments and its actually about 50/50. Many seem to already know its a Facebook game and do not think any Facebook game should be on Steam. And I agree. But then again, I dont use Steam, it’s just another money pit that I do not need or want.

It’s not really a money pit. It’s just a form of getting retail games.

I can under stand how we want to be different, but we wont last long if we don’t communicate better, you cant expect us lower levels to learn when one of the bigger guys swoops in and takes out a base I was working on. I wasnt even Idle on the base for more than 10 mins when it got leveled by someone else, and I wasn’t worried about them logging on, as most of the alliance we are fighting appears to be inactive.

Alright, I think we need some better communication amongst members during war, several times I have been attacking a person, then need to make more units, then by the time I go to attack and finish them off….another member already beat me to it, not the worst thing that could happen, I know.

But it does put us lower level members at a disadvantage when trying to loot.

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